2005-12-16 04:00:00 PDT Tampa, Fla. -- Jon Gruden never was one for looking back or, for that matter, looking too far ahead, either.

But that shouldn't stop the rest of us.

Gruden's team, the Buccaneers, plays Saturday at New England in a matchup of NFL division leaders, and it's hard not to think about how much has changed since the last time Gruden was in that stadium at Foxborough, Mass. -- or, for that matter, how different life is for so many because of one play on that last visit.

That occurred on the snowy night of Jan. 19, 2002 -- the night America learned of the tuck rule.

It was just one game, really one play, during a divisional playoff game. But the fortunes of at least nine NFL franchises may have been changed because of it.

A word here first: The Raiders, Gruden and many other apologists will not agree with this, but the fact is that the officials ultimately got the call right and that the rule was neither new nor unknown -- and, after the controversial play, the Raiders still had plenty of chances to stop the Patriots from tying and ultimately winning the game, and failed.

Yet, no matter which side of the officials-against-the-Raiders conspiracy on which you fall, there is no denying that the Patriots dynasty was launched on such a thin thread, and Gruden's departure from the Raiders -- and the team's ultimate fall back to laughingstock -- was set in motion.

"If we had won that game, I might have been selling pretzels in the Black Hole," Gruden said during an interview at the Bucs' headquarters this week. "You never know what would have happened."

No, we don't. But we do know what would not have happened. The Patriots would not have won the Super Bowl following the 2001 season. Perhaps Bill Belichick would not have become a genius, perhaps Tom Brady would not have become Joe Montana.

Perhaps.

"I think it's kind of hard to put all those events on that one play," Belichick said on a conference call from Foxborough. "I think the play affected one game. I don't know what else it did. ... I don't think that play had that much of an impact on any other game. To me, plays affect the games that they're in. Each week is its own week."

But, just perhaps, suppose the Raiders won that game and then two more games after that, as the Patriots did, or even one, just to reach the Super Bowl, and Al Davis would have come to his senses and been forced to give Gruden control of the team to remain as the coach.

Gruden would not have come to Tampa Bay, and dominoes around the league would not have fallen as they did.

"Maybe we would have won the Super Bowl," Gruden said. "It's not like we were chopped liver going out there (to Foxborough)."

"That play goes (the Raiders') way and Oakland could end up being Super Bowl champion, they were that good that year," agreed Derrick Brooks, the great Tampa Bay linebacker. "Who knows? (Gruden) may not have come here. That play did affect a lot of people."

The Raiders and Patriots were the most obviously impacted by the tuck rule call, but they were not the only teams affected; at least seven other teams felt the fallout.

-- Tampa Bay: A couple of weeks later, the Bucs made the deal to bring Gruden from Oakland. The following season, the Bucs won the Super Bowl. Gruden was given wide powers in the organization, and the former top management was dispersed.

-- Atlanta: Rich McKay, the Bucs' former general manager, now is president of the Falcons. He co-existed with Gruden through Tampa Bay's 2002 Super Bowl season and left during the 2003 season. The Falcons reached the NFC Championship Game last year.

-- Seattle: Tim Ruskell, McKay's top aide, followed him to Atlanta and now is president of the Seahawks. Seattle has the best record in the NFC this year.

-- Pittsburgh: It's easy to overlook the Steelers in this discussion, but they were hosting the AFC Championship Game a week later. They lost to Brady and the Patriots. Suppose they had beaten the Raiders and gone on to win the Super Bowl? Maybe they would have launched the dynasty the Patriots launched. Maybe Bill Cowher would be Bill Belichick.

-- 49ers: Steve Mariucci, then the 49ers' coach, flirted with the Tampa Bay job. But the Bucs' ownership had Gruden in the back of their minds, and Mariucci wasn't hired. If Gruden had won with the Raiders, he might not have been available, the Bucs might have been more interested in Mariucci, and he would not have returned to the 49ers only to be fired a year later. Bill Walsh still had some influence at the time, so perhaps if the job opened a year before it did, the 49ers would not have made the Dennis Erickson mistake, which leads to ...

-- Detroit: If Mariucci went to Tampa Bay, Matt Millen couldn't have hired him in Detroit. Maybe Millen would have conducted a more exhaustive search, and hired someone competent like Marvin Lewis -- who, by the way, was the guy McKay originally wanted to hire for the Bucs.

-- Cincinnati: And if Lewis had gone to Detroit or Tampa Bay, he wouldn't have been available to salvage the wreck that used to be the Bengals, who are now headed for the playoffs for the first time in 15 years.

Dizzy yet?

"That's the nature of big plays in big games," McKay said by telephone from his office outside Atlanta. "These games are so close, they get decided by one play or one call, and the amazing thing is the lives that they do affect. In that instance, you can go back and do a lot of guesswork. Those types of big plays, they do have impacts. In this one, who knows what the impact would have been."

McKay, who is co-chairman of the NFL's competition committee, does want to make one point for sure. The tuck rule had been on the books for years, and those who said they were not aware of it hadn't done their homework -- particularly since there was a controversial tuck rule call only a couple of weeks before that game in Foxborough, in a Monday night game involving the Rams and Kurt Warner.

"That's the way the play was called," Belichick said. "It was called correctly. If it happened again today, it would be called the same way, and that's football. You live with the way the rules are written and the ways the plays unfold."

Many of those who were on the other side, however, never will be convinced that Walt Coleman, the referee, made the right call.

Some still point to a famous photo of the play that showed Brady with both hands appearing to touch the ball, as if it were the Zapruder film unraveling the Kennedy assassination.

"I've never seen anybody throw a pass with two hands on the ball," Jim Gruden, the coach's dad, said this week.

Jim Gruden, at the time a 49ers scout and now a Bucs consultant, watched that game from his Tampa home with his wife, Kathy.

"When I saw it, I was jumping up and down because I knew (the Raiders) were going to go to the AFC Championship Game," he said. "The game was over. Then I saw the flag out, and I knew they were going to (change) it, and I told my wife, 'We're going to get screwed on this one, I guarantee it.' "

In fact, of course, the coach's challenge flag was not a factor because the game was in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter. The call for a replay review came from a league official, not Belichick.

The play, originally called a Brady fumble recovered by the Raiders, was ruled an incomplete pass.

"There's no way that was an incomplete pass," Jim Gruden said.

His opinion is a popular one, even among people with no ax to grind.

Seattle coach Mike Holmgren often has referred to his "50 guys at a bar" theory, as in, if 50 guys at the bar think it's a fumble, then it's a fumble. But the rule, while it has been looked at, remains unchanged, because the NFL rules tend to favor the offense, and the tuck rule gives a small benefit to the offense.

Brooks and Chris Hovan, a Bucs defensive lineman who was playing for Minnesota at the time of the controversy, had no stake in the outcome of that game. Both of them said this week, however, that they were watching the game and, in their minds, the Brady play was clearly a fumble.

"It's a fumble," Hovan said. "And they made up a new rule after that. I mean, come on ... a lot of money got changed in that game right there."

In preparing for this trip to Foxborough, where snow is expected, Jon Gruden showed some tapes from the tuck rule game to the Bucs' players this week to prepare them for the weather. He did not show the controversial play, however, saying repeatedly, "I don't want to relive it. I just don't want to relive it. I try to move on."

The 'Tuck Rule'

From the NFL rule book, Rule 3, Section 21, Article 2, Note 2:

"...any intentional forward movement of [the passer's] arm starts a forward pass, even if the player loses possession of the ball as he is attempting to tuck it back toward his body."